Stuff Happens
by SimplexityJane
Summary: And you can't do anything about it. Witch Lydia AU, Stiles POV. Brief swearing, because this is Stiles and Stiles is who he is.


**Continuation of my witch Lydia AU, filler, Stiles POV. I don't like it much but I'm posting it anyway. Not betaed, so if you see a tense change or grammar yuckies let me know. Surprisingly gen, actually. Mentions of Stiles/Lydia, one-sided. It also gives some of the Seer point of view, before Red Strings. **

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The story goes like this: boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl when he reads the differential equation she's written in her spare time and disguised as a drawing. It's third grade, and the girl twists his arm behind his back until he agrees not to tell anyone. She summarily ignores him for the next eight or so years.

(His mom gives him a tea she says will shut out the voices; it does, but he can still see the equations in the universe, glyphs and sigils and equations running together so that he has to speak so quickly the words blur in other people's minds. The ADHD meds have the same effect, without the good feelings the drink gave him. He wonders if Dad ever put it together, Mom's death and Stiles's ADHD, but Dad- Dad might be sheriff, but gods know he's clueless.)

Boy's best friend gets bitten by a psychopathic werewolf. Somehow, this makes more sense to Stiles than anything else. He knows the entire history of male circumcision, had the mating patterns of the North American, British and European werewolf burned into his mind on accident, can quote half a dozen ancient texts (sporadic passages), and when Scott gets turned into a werewolf Stiles figures it's just as well.

He dances with the girl at Winter Formal, but she loves someone else. Letting her go is the hardest thing he's ever done, his gut screaming at him and red at the edges of his vision. He follows, too, just too late. And even though Peter Hale doesn't see anything, Stiles does. Black ink he sees right beyond his senses, an acrid sulfur stench purifying her. But bleeding out is a very real possibility and he can't just leave her there. Loving her is the only thing he's got left.

(He knows how to make a molotov cocktail now. Unfortunately.)

"I'm the Alpha now," Derek Hale says, eyes red with fire and blood.

Lydia gets possessed by Peter Hale and is apparently a witch. Fuck. His. Life.

"Stiles," she says while they're training with guns with the Argents. They're mostly human, even if Victoria doesn't trust Lydia at all. Witch, she thinks, and Stiles figures that's the best way to put it, really. He looks up and raises his eyebrows at her. She took to guns unnaturally quickly, which is just like Lydia. She's sort of amazing like that. She doesn't talk to him, just traces her hand across the air that sometimes gleams in the corners of the world.

"What are you doing?" he asks. Her eyes are glowing palely, almost purple, but her skin is a normal color and she doesn't attract anyone's attention.

"Your aura," she says. "It's very... distinct. In the way it interacts with everything. Most people's are blurred. You're clumsy and don't pay attention to anything because you don't have to. Things fit themselves around you and even when they don't they amuse you." It's the way she looks at his eyes, he thinks. Those inhuman, almost alien eyes staring him down and picking apart his soul, like she can see all the things he figured out no one else could when he was five. He nods. She stares at him for a long time before nodding decisively. "Seer."

"Say what now?" he asked. She rolled her eyes.

"You have the Sight. Some, at least, your medication and something else must be binding it. I could undo it..."

"No!" Stiles doesn't say this willingly, it's nearly wrenched from his throat. He gulps. "That was loud. I didn't mean no no, obviously, but I would rather think about that for a while before actually getting my walls forced down."

"Alright," she says, back to normal Lydia levels of crazy. "If you ever change your mind, let me know."

"Yeah, I'll do that," he says, then goes back to his gun.

He turns seventeen and figures out some things about himself before talking to her about it again. As they're sort of in a foxhole and she's using a lot of magic to fight the elves Peter forced to his cause, she shouts at him to, "Shut the hell up, Stilinski! And shoot those little bastards!" He shoots the little bastards and when one gets close enough he hits it with the butt of his rifle.

It goes like that for a while, actually. It's not the right time and the growly presence of Derek Hale at his dinner table disconcerts him, then Allison miscarries and that mess gives them another enemy in the form of Allison's mother because Scott and Allison agreed not to have sex until college (that they were apparently mates and no amount of protection could stop that when it was the right phase of the moon or something didn't enter into anyone's mind). Allison is crying over everything and Scott's punching the walls. Erica and Isaac break up- no one knows they'd been dating. Derek gets surly. Stiles decides to get people drunk, even if he has to make them drink the entire liquor store.

That... doesn't work as well as he thought it would, actually. He forgets the night entirely and doesn't know why Derek stares at him for the next week like he's either an idiot or edible, and no one will tell him why.

"Lydia," he says one day. She's silent while he flails, silent when he asks. He thinks maybe she doesn't care, won't take away whatever spell the potions and medicine enhanced. Then her hand is on his head and her heart is beating under her skin and the world falls away, only to be replaced with colors too bright to stand. It hurts too much for him to keep his eyes open for long and he's falling, falling...

"Are you alright?" his dad asks when he comes down to dinner. Worry and- "Eat fiber, Dad, your colon is disgusting."- indigestion cloud his eyes. Everything looks like the brightest summer day, fresh and too bright until he can see clearly, and then he has to look away every few seconds or he'll go blind. Except he can't get used to this, can only dull it and pull himself back into his body, very carefully not looking.

The red strings are a surprise. He ignores them until he realizes who have them.


End file.
